Peace on Earth

December 17, 2005

What with the holiday season upon us, the old “Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Man” phrase crossed my mind. That got me to thinking (it happens, though usually with bad results). We’ve probably had two or three generations of beauty contestant entrants working on the world peace problem, along with putting an end to world hunger, yet it seems we haven’t moved forward at all. I’ve never really put much worry into either, considering these ladies are on the job, but I’m beginning to think they aren’t up to the task. So I thought I’d throw a couple of suggestions their way to see if it might help.

I know it doesn’t sound as impressive, but instead of working on the entire world at one time, how about one of the contestants wanting to put an end to hunger in, say, Butte, Montana. See, I figure these girls start out on their “cure world hunger” task with a lot if energy, but when they actually get a handle on the size of the problem it overwhelms them. But Butte has a manageable population of a bit over 30,000. And since we can assume most of them aren’t deprived in the food department, let’s err on the side of caution and say it’s as high as 1 in 100; that means 300 folks in Butte need fed. Heck, a couple of soup kitchens and a PB&J brigade and Butte’s taken care of – it’s that simple.

This is a mission she can sink her teeth into, see some progress. You talk to any of the “end of world hunger” contestants after a few years, ask them how it’s going, and they have to admit things still suck. But you give Miss Iowa a couple of years in Butte, then ask her, and I’ll bet she’ll have the problem licked. Fifty years multiplied by fifty contestants, and we’ll have 2,500 cities covered, and that’s just the Miss America pageant – we’ve also got Miss USA, Miss Teen America, Miss Teen USA, Miss Fitness, Miss Senior America, Miss Wheelchair America, Miss Senior Sweetheart, Miss African-American, Miss Nude USA, and more, plus tons of local and state pageants (Miss Sweet Potato, Miss Cucumber, Miss other vegetable along with Miss this or that city or county, and on and on). Heck, we can cover the entire nation in a few years, no problem. As for the rest of the world, well, there’s the Miss Universe and Miss World pageants, which require each country to hold a contest, with corresponding local contests and so forth; I see soup kitchens and PB&J sandwiches around the globe.

While I’ve no doubt you’re impressed with the above logic, at this point you’re thinking about the post title: Peace on Earth. I’m gettin’ there. I know you’ve seen, as I have, those commercials where you can feed a hungry kid for thirty cents a day. Even ignoring the fact that all those beauty pageant contestants are working on the problem, I don’t sign up because I know that at least half that money goes to make the commercial, pay for administration, offices, phones, business lunches, travel, and tons of other overhead. Heck, probably more than half goes for overhead, but we’ll figure half. Which means you have to feed the kid with only fifteen cents, and fifteen cents a day won’t buy more than rice.

I keep picturing, should I go for that program, opening the door one day to an emaciated foreigner screaming at me “You know wha’ sisteen-thousand, fo hunned twinny-fi is? It tree bow’ rice tree time day fo fi’tee year! You dri’ nice cah, you live nice house, you cunna spring fo a fri chicken leg evah now an then?”* At which point he shoots me or blows up my house. And that’s when it struck me: the reason we don’t have peace on earth is because of all these pissed of people eating rice every day, day in and day out, week in and week out, year in and year out, to the point where the promise of seventy-two virgins and a steak sandwich (it’s in the literature, I’ll bet) is worth getting blown up over. So I say we go with my beauty contestant plan — soup kitchens & PB&Js worldwide — and within ten years we’ll have no hungry people and will then have peace on earth.

I smell a Nobel Peace Prize in my future. Pardon me while I go work on my acceptance speech.

* My best foreigner lingo; live with it.

Note: You may be wondering why I know so much about pageants; I’ve been married for almost thirty years with a daughter that’s about to turn twenty-one. With one female in the house for the past twenty-seven years, and two for the past twenty-one, I’ve only seen three or four pageants. That’s actually a pretty good record.